The Hour is Blue

Perpetual Evolution — A Conversation with Federica Mingolla, One of Italy’s Most Renowned Climbers

In this conversation, I speak with Federica Mingolla about climbing, freedom, ambition, motherhood, and the ways our lives and identities continue to evolve.

CiTR 101.9 FM / The Blue Hour

Recorded in Aosta, Italy, on August 18, 2026

Listen: CiTR | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

The Blue Hour, hosted by Farha Guerrero, airs every Tuesday at 2 p.m. on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and at citr.ca.

Federica is an Italian professional climber, alpinist and mountain guide. Born in Turin in 1994, she began climbing as a teenager and went on to build a career spanning sport climbing, multi-pitch routes and alpinism. She is now based in the Aosta Valley, where she works as a mountain guide. She also holds a degree in Sports Science and is an athlete for La Sportiva and Petzl.

Our conversation moves between climbing and life beyond it: instinct and uncertainty, ambition and compromise, becoming a mother, and remaining open to change. Federica describes herself as being in a state of “perpetual evolution,” an idea that became one of the threads running through our conversation.

INTRO

My name is Farha Guerrero, and you are listening to The Blue Hour on CiTR 101.9 FM at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

CiTR broadcasts from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam indigenous people.

My guest today is Federica Mingolla, one of the most accomplished Italian climbers of her generation. Federica is a climber and mountain guide who lives in the Aosta Valley.

In 2014, she became the first Italian woman to climb Tom et je ris, the famous 60-metre 8b+ route in the Verdon Gorge.

Two years later, she became the first woman to lead the entire Via Attraverso il Pesce — the Fish route — on the south face of the Marmolada, climbing all 900 metres free in a single day.

And in 2023, she completed Hotel Supramonte in Sardinia, an eleven-pitch route with difficulties up to 8b, after eleven hours of climbing.

These are just a few of the achievements from a career that has taken her from difficult sport climbing to some of the great walls of the Alps and beyond.

I wanted to mention them because Federica is remarkably humble in the conversation you are about to hear.

I interviewed her on August 18th at my home in Aosta, sitting together in my small orange kitchen. She brought her baby with her, so from time to time you will hear another little voice in the room.

It became a very open and spontaneous conversation about climbing, uncertainty, freedom, ambition, motherhood, and what it means to keep evolving.

Here is my conversation with Federica Mingolla.

Transcript

Transcript lightly edited for clarity while preserving the natural rhythm of the conversation.

Farha: I'm here with Federica Mingolla in my home in Valle d'Aosta in northern Italy, and we are going to talk about her life now, her life as a climber, and also as a new mother of a beautiful young girl named Aurora, three months old. It's a privilege to have you here, Federica. Thank you so much for coming.

Federica: Thank you for letting me be here with you. We are in two today.

Farha: And so baby is part of the interview too, so make noise, Aurora, please. This will sound good on radio.

I wanted to ask you because I went climbing with you yesterday. It was a very special moment in my life. You are very well known, not just in Italy but around the world, and I had been watching a lot of videos of you climbing. Life sometimes gives you these spontaneous moments, and I got to climb with you yesterday in a beautiful spot and see the whole Valle d'Aosta once I did the first route.

You said something when I came down, that climbing is more than a sport. Why do you think that is?

Federica: I think climbing is not just a sport because when you start climbing, you're not just training for performances and for projects like usually in a sport you do.

It's also about travelling, knowing new people every time you climb somewhere. It's about falling in love every time with a different kind of climbing, for example different rocks, different ways of approaching climbing. Big walls, cracks, hand jamming.

There are many, many ways to climb a rock, and there are many, many ways to approach your life as a climber. You can decide to be an indoor climber, or a climber who wants to travel all over the world, or to climb just in the free time you have.

So it's really a lifestyle because you can choose also which life you want to do as a climber.

Farha: And when you mean lifestyle, is it something deeper, maybe a little philosophical in a way?

Federica: Obviously it's also something deeper, especially for me. When I first started climbing, for me it was just a sport because it was something I wanted to do in the free time after school.

But then I discovered that it was not just a sport because I deeply fell in love with it, and I was basing all my life according to climbing. Everything I was doing was, in some kind of way, to reach a goal in climbing or to feel alive while climbing.

For me, still, when I'm kind of sad or I don't feel I'm doing something in my life, I think about how many walls I climbed. I think about how I'm still in love with climbing, and so I have something really big in my hands. It's not just a project I've completed, but something I have in my heart.

It's a real love story.

Farha: It's a love story, and I certainly felt that with you.

There's something you talk about with climbing that I think has some parallel to life, the idea that we are naturally instinctive and spontaneous. On the rock you have these moments where you may not even know what you're capable of. You might surprise yourself.

Do you feel that there is something about climbing that feels similar to the way we live, like climbing is a metaphor for life in a way?

Federica: I think yes. I think life is a metaphor of climbing, or climbing is a metaphor of life.

Think about when you try a route and you are projecting this piece of rock and trying to free climb a little piece of rock. It's not useful, if you think about it. In life, it's not useful to climb. It's only something you want to do.

But life is the same. Most of the things you do are not really useful for other people, they are useful only for you because you like it.

So the important thing at the end is not to do what other people want you to do, but to do what you like to do. In climbing it's the same thing.

If you like climbing a rock in the middle of nowhere, even if it's not the best route in the world, maybe it's chipped also, so it's not natural, it's not important if other people think that it is not good. The important thing is that you enjoy the process and you enjoy climbing that piece of rock.

And in life, if you want to study something that is not really useful for working, for example, but it's more for having a culture about it, I say, let's do it. Don't think, "Maybe if I study philosophy, I won't work with that." The important thing is to do it, and then let's see what life will bring to you.

In my life I always tried not to think about the future when making my choices, but instead thinking about what I want to do now, and then I will see what will happen.

I can say it worked because now I'm doing what I really want to do. At the end I can easily say, follow your passion. Follow what you think is the best for you, in climbing and in life.

Farha: You describe yourself, at least in one interview, as being in "perpetual evolution." That's just a translation from Italian.

Federica: Yes, I did.

Farha: Do you feel that climbing has changed with you as you have changed?

Federica: Sure. I started as a sport climber, and as I said before I was just looking for sport and performance at that time.

Then I discovered there was so much more in climbing I wanted to discover, and it was outside the gym, not inside.

When I started to fall in love again with nature, with the mountains, and to approach nature with climbing, in that moment I think I started to be another person. Not the Federica that lives in the city, but Federica that wants to be outdoors.

In that moment I also decided I had to change my home, so I came to Valle d'Aosta to live.

Since that time I started to approach many different ways of climbing. I discovered big walls, multi-pitch at medium altitudes, or let's say, multi-pitch in high mountains, and then opening up your own routes.

Every time I was doing that little step to do something different, I was changing something in my mind. I was growing.

When I decided to do my first expedition abroad, it was that time of my life when I really wanted to escape from Italy because I was feeling it was suffocating me in some kind of way. I wanted to discover the world.

Now, for example, I am in a moment of my life where I just want to build my own house, to build something for me here in Valle d'Aosta. I'm not thinking about having big travels abroad. I'm really happy to stay here with this little baby.

Climbing is something that grew with me and changed my ways of living my life.

Farha: You have a philosophy of life, and that's what I think is deep about you.

Do you feel that climbing is unique because it has that tactile sense where we're physically touching the rock? Because you do many sports, in what way does rock climbing feel different, or is it part of everything else you do in this lifestyle?

Federica: I think this is something really personal.

For me, every time I touch the rock and I'm climbing, I feel like I'm alive. It's the thing I want to do. I think, this is the place. This is the place I want to be now.

I can be everywhere. The important thing is that I'm touching this rock, I'm starting climbing, and even if I'm not in shape, it's not the best moment of my life, that's not important.

The important thing is that there is me and the rock, and I'm in love with that.

That's why I say it's really personal, because somebody can say the same thing about ski touring, or playing the guitar. But for me it's like this. It's really, really important to feel this sensation.

I can do a day in the swimming pool, but it's not the same.

Farha: And you were a swimmer before you started climbing.

Federica: That's why I kind of stopped, because I was not feeling that feeling between me and the pool.

Now, for example, I still go to the swimming pool for training, but for me it's training.

When I go climbing, for me it's not training. I'm going climbing. It's something more.

Farha: I think it's a way of life for you.

Looking at some of your recent interviews, that's the feeling I get. You are a professional athlete, that's absolutely true, you're known as one. But I think, at least from what I feel, the sport is one part of this other big picture which, as you say, keeps evolving and changing.

Federica: Exactly. That's why I always say that I don't feel like an athlete.

Athletes, in the end, are people that have a training schedule and have lots of rules to follow. I don't feel I had rules in my life as a climber. I always just followed my instincts and have done what I wanted in that moment of my life.

Of course, I trained a little bit, but it was, as I said, a training that I was feeling and not training that somebody wrote down for me on a schedule.

So I can say I'm an athlete, but I'm a passionate, really passionate climber and mountaineer.

Farha: And many other things, which maybe we should talk about now because we've been hearing baby. You are now a mother.

You once compared a life without compromise to becoming an island in the middle of the sea.

Has becoming a mother changed what freedom and compromise mean to you? It's a whole different world now being a mom. You've entered a new world.

Federica: I'm still learning.

When I decided to be a mom, I stopped thinking about the future. I never thought about the future a lot, as I said before. I just follow my instincts every time.

But this time I had to think about, okay, what I'm going through, what I'm doing, because it's not about me. It's about someone else.

So I tried to think rationally about which ways my life could evolve.

I kept climbing in my pregnancy. I was so happy about that, even if many people were thinking or saying on social media, in the comments, or even directly, that maybe it was not the best thing to do in pregnancy.

But I'm pretty sure that also in pregnancy, as in life normally, you have to do what you feel is the best for you, for your body, for your mental health, for yourself.

I was feeling good touching the rock, climbing easy pitches with my high harness. I don't know the name in English, but it's a harness that is made for people who work on the trees, and it's okay also for pregnant women because the baby is not pressed by the harness.

So it was safe. And I was really happy.

When finally she was in this world with me, I really understood that now was the hardest moment, to try to find a balance again with my life before pregnancy, before her, and my life that is coming, that is evolving now.

She is three months old, so it's not a long time we are sharing our life together. But I can say now, when I go climbing and training in the gym, especially training in the gym because she's so little, it's difficult to go climbing outdoors if I'm not with my partner, who can help me and I can help him.

When we are two, it's better with the baby.

Usually I prefer to go climbing indoors with her. But when I'm with her and I'm climbing, I feel like I'm the happiest woman on earth. Really, really, I feel like I have everything I want.

Farha: Where do you put her when you're climbing? Are you bouldering in the gym?

Federica: I'm putting her on a crash pad, so she can look at the holds. She's curious because they are all colourful.

She does some tummy time. Sometimes she falls asleep, she sleeps two hours sometimes.

But I feel she's happy when we are outdoors, anywhere, in the gym or in the mountains. She's really happy.

When we are at home, sometimes I feel like she's a little bit bored. So at the end, I think she's like me.

Farha: Why did you name her Aurora?

Federica: Because Aurora is the first light you see in the morning. It's the pink one, the first light you can see when it's a sunny day and the sky has no clouds.

I thought Aurora for me was, like her, a new beginning. Like a new day is starting. Aurora is my new beginning.

And also I thought about this when I was in Norway skiing. I saw many Aurora Borealis, and I thought it has to be the most beautiful thing you can see in your life. It's magical.

At the same time, she's the most beautiful thing that happened to me.

So that's why Aurora.

Farha: And she is very beautiful.

I want to talk about some of the other things you're doing because you're keeping yourself quite busy. You're also a student, you're studying quite a bit, and you finished your mountain guide certification.

I would imagine that's not easy in Italy, to get the kind of certification that you have.

Federica: The process for being a mountain guide is long in Italy, as in the other countries. It's five years plus the curriculum. So it's like a university degree, I think harder.

When I finished my guiding course, the same year I had the qualification, I decided to come back studying.

When I was living in Torino and I finished my university, I studied physical education at university. I said, okay, if I can do the osteopathy college, I will stay in Torino and I will do the guiding course after that.

But at that time the college for osteopathy was really expensive. We are three sisters, and my parents could not pay my college and the university of my sisters all together.

So they said, "Okay, you will do that when you can pay by yourself."

So I started doing the guiding course. It's two years, and then you can work for two years, and then the fifth year you have the last exams.

So you can work, but you're like a tirocinante, an aspirant guide, they say.

In that period I earned enough money to start university.

So here I am now. I'm in the fourth year of the college. It's a college because it's private, it's not a public university, the program of osteopathy. But I really like it.

It's not easy because you have to study a lot. Now, studying with a baby is something really hard because you have to play with her while you're studying.

Also we have many hours of practice, so you have to stay in Torino for that because we have to practice in the same place we study.

That's not easy, but we will make it. Still one more year to go.

Farha: I know you're not someone who thinks too far into the future, but where do you see yourself professionally as a climber, as a guide, and also one day working as an osteopath?

How do you envision the future?

Federica: Everything. I don't know how.

For sure my way of approaching my climbing life will change with the child, also because I'm not going to stop at the first child. I want to have two babies.

It will be a good challenge to combine everything at the end, family, climbing.

I also think I won't stop projecting something for me, like some new multi-pitch, or especially opening new routes. I really love opening new routes right now.

Farha: That's a very good question. Why do you like to open new routes in different places around the world? Is it creativity? Is it curiosity?

Federica: It's a new line. It's your line. It's something you imagine before, and then you go there. You have to plan everything for being there.

It's like art. It's like a painting that you imagine and then you draw it.

Also, starting travel without knowing what you're going to do, and then finding your wall and finding your line, I think it's the best sensation in life.

Even if you don't go far, far away, you can find your line everywhere.

That's the other thing I love, because you can be a wild girl in the best moment of her life, in the best physical shape, but you can also be a postpartum mother who likes climbing but wants to open a new route and do it near home.

It's something you can do everywhere and you can do anytime, opening your line. It doesn't matter how difficult it is.

Farha: I had a guest on my show who was describing this artistic side, just like you. She described a young girl in her local climbing gym who created a route that looked like a work of art. It wasn't maybe the best thing to climb, but it was very creative.

This was Sophie Alexander, and she was interested in exactly what you said, this creative side.

So if you're on the rock, what do you do? You're going to the crag, you're looking at something, are you studying it? How do you envision a line?

Federica: It's difficult to explain. It's something you feel.

You see a wall and you say, "Maybe there." You have already checked that your line is that one.

Sometimes in granite you follow a system of cracks. Sometimes on limestone you follow the colour of the wall, because if it's more yellow, sometimes it's more overhanging. If it's more grey, sometimes it's less overhanging.

So how you imagine a line, it's a mix of romanticism and also rational things. Knowing really well the rocks, the kind of rocks, the place, your possibility.

Because if you climb 6b, you're not going to look at an overhanging wall. You're going to look at something more slabby.

It's a mix of things, I think.

Farha: And then do you take a photo? How does the dream of something actually become a route?

Federica: It can start also from a map, like Google Earth.

Sometimes you see a shadow in Google Maps and you know there is a wall, because the shadow means that there is a wall. It can be a rock wall usually, because if there is the shadow, it's not a pyramid, it's something straight.

And then you go. That happened to me in Greenland, for example.

Other times you know there is a valley with other multi-pitch. You go there, you look at the multi-pitch already existing, and then you find a place in the wall that has no lines, and you decide to open there.

You go there usually with a, how do you say, binocolo?

Farha: Binoculars.

Federica: With binoculars, you look at the wall. You see if there is something on it, you see if there are some holes, and then you take pictures. You decide to come back with the stuff you need.

Farha: Then are you contacting local people? Is there a local climbing association involved with putting in the bolts and everything?

Federica: You can look at the guidebook, for example, for local people. If there are contacts of people that bolt in the area, you can talk with them.

You can also talk about the ethics they use there, because the ethics are really important in climbing. At the end, each climber has his own ethics.

But if you go, for example, in Repubblica Ceca, in the Czech Republic, you cannot put bolts. You can only use a kind of protection they use there that is made with ropes, because the rock is sandstone.

You can destroy the rock if you use our common protection.

That's why it's important to know the local ethics. If you go bolting or opening your lines, also without bolts, like in trad style, it's important to know if you can do it.

Maybe there is a park, for example, that is protected, like here in Gran Paradiso.

You cannot go there with the drill and open your lines wherever you want because there are birds that are protected by the park, and they are staying on the walls. You cannot go there, because otherwise they will be scared and they won't have their babies and make nests.

Farha: Is it exciting when you envision something and it actually becomes a route? Is the excitement also because you want to climb it?

Federica: It's exciting because it's something you feel is yours.

It's yours because you imagine it, you dream it, you are there, you are doing it all, and then you can also maybe free climb your line.

It's the entire process that makes it really important for you.

And if it's not important for other people, it doesn't matter, because the important thing is that you really enjoy the process.

Farha: Finally, I want to ask you about something. You are an extraordinary climber, but you're also a woman, and a woman who has done many first ascents and many things that no one had done before you.

Do you feel that your identity as a woman is something that makes you who you are as well? Do you feel that there is a female climber, or do you feel that all climbers are the same, it doesn't matter our gender, we are all climbers?

Federica: In my thought, there is no gender.

I always thought I was not a girl, not a man. I was a climber.

But I think my success, let's say, was made because I was a girl climbing and not a man, because I was living that moment of climbing history when it was strange seeing a woman, a strong woman, climbing in the mountains, for example.

It was new to see a young woman being an Alpine guide.

So I think it was important for me that I was living that moment, and my success was really connected with this, for the time I was living.

But for me that wasn't the most important. The important thing was still that I was enjoying what I was doing.

If a sponsor was deciding to give me money for my project because I was a girl climber, it didn't matter for me. The important thing was that I could do that because a sponsor was giving me some money and giving me support. Punto.

Farha: However, I think women like myself admire women like you. You're a role model for many women who maybe want to get into the sport and who watch your videos.

It's not that it's a man's sport or a woman's sport, I agree with you there. However, to see a woman strong and climbing what you climb, I think it's pretty admirable.

Federica: But I was not thinking about that at the time. I was just thinking about myself.

We are all egocentric, and climbers especially.

I discovered that I was a kind of model, let's say, for people, especially women, when I was a little bit older, when I was like 25, 26, 27, and I was travelling all the time, doing projects, pushing hard.

I was just thinking, "Okay, I want to do that, I'll go for that. I want to do the other thing, I'll go for the other thing. Sponsor gives me money? Okay, let's do it. If a sponsor doesn't give me money, okay, I will do it by myself again."

I was doing it even if I had no support by anybody because, we say in Italiano, I was a testa calda, no? A warm head, like somebody that just goes for it, even if the heart is burning.

Now I appreciate that I could be a kind of, let's say, we say punto di riferimento, somebody that can inspire someone else.

For me now it's important, because I'm almost 32 and I know that sometimes I need the same.

And I hope it will be the same also for my daughter.

But it's important also to be inspired by the correct person, by the right person, because we have also many examples that are not good to follow in sport.

Farha: Yes, that's true, which we don't need to name.

Federica: No, because we know that in sports there are some people that push themselves almost to not be human anymore - because of performance.

I think it's not healthy for people to follow that example.

Farha: Do you have anything else that you want to say or share?

Federica: At the end, the important thing in life for me is to be inspired by something.

For me it was climbing, and it is climbing also now.

For me now it's a kind of climbing that is a little bit different than before. As I said, it's something shared with my family.

But I think without climbing I could not be the person I am now. I couldn't be really happy because I feel it's the best expression of myself.

It's not important, it's not useful in life, even if I did this for work for many years. It wasn't important that I was making money. It was important for me because I was happy with it.

And it's the same right now, even if I'm not, let's say, an athlete like before, because I decided not to stop, but to kind of evolve as a climber, being more of a mountaineer, being more of a mountain guide, being a mom.

But still, when I climb a little piece of rock, I'm the happiest woman on earth.

Farha: And I think you are too, Aurora. You're smiling right now.

Federica: Yes, she's smiling a lot. She's happy.

Farha: You are very happy.

Well, thank you. Grazie mille.

Federica: Sorry for my English.

Farha: No, your English is great.

Federica: We will work on it.

Farha: Thank you so much for this.

Federica: Thank you too.

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